Elvenborn

(but only in his head) when that simple fact came near to undoing him.

It was a very near thing; one moment, he was easing himself along the cavern, and the next, his questing foot met empty air, and unfortunately, he had already trusted some weight to it, not anticipating that there would be a drop-off. Aelmarkin teetered on the brink for a heart-stopping moment before his flailing hand caught the edge of the wall and he was able to steady himself.

He burned the air with a flurry of mental curses before his heart stopped racing and he was able to really look at what lay below him. But then—oh then, his heart raced for an entirely different reason!

There below him, ranked and waiting like so many placid, sleeping bullocks, were the ancient constructs that the Ances­tors had brought with them. Row upon row of them, waiting for the proper touch to bring them alive and call them to ser­vice.

His touch. Never doubt it. He could hardly wait to get down among them! What need would he have of slaves or gladiators or even armies with these powerful creations at his command?

His mouth gone suddenly dry with anticipation, he ascer­tained that the drop was nowhere near as long as he'd thought, and eased himself belly-down over the edge. The rock scraped him even through the tough leather of his hunting-tunic, but he hardly felt it in his haste to get down among those things out of another world and time.

Besides, he needed to get under cover, in case one of Kyrt-ian's slaves came snooping. It would be a disaster to come this far and then be tripped up by one of Kyrtian's wretched slaves.

He felt better with the bulk of several of the things between himself and Kyrtian's lamps. Safe enough to kindle a very, very dim hand-light of his own, one which could be hidden in his fist and used only, held close to the metal sides of the constructs, to see if he could decipher any of the ancient script. He hoped to find instructions there—surely not everyone who was asked to control the things in the past actually learned how to do so before attempting to operate them! Failing that, he hoped for la­bels, or some evocative name that would tell him what the things were used for.

But as he moved silently from one huge bulk to the next, brushing off a literal coat of dust that fell to the ground in a sheet, he was disappointed. Though he looked as high as he could reach, instructions there were none; nor names, either— at least not on the sides that he examined. He didn't dare move to the side facing Kyrtian's lamps; bad enough that he was a moving shadow among unmoving ones! The murmur of voices suggested that all of Kyrtian's people were still with him, but was by no means a trustworthy way of telling for certain.

He cursed the Ancestors now—how stupid could one be, to neglect to leave instructions for the uninitiated? Unless those instructions had been in one of the books back in the main cave, books that crumbled at a touch....

For a moment, he despaired. But then came a stroke of luck so incredible he hardly dared believe it.

As he closed his fist around his hand-light in disappointment at—again—finding nothing, he caught a fugitive hint of glow­ing green out of the comer of his eye.

He turned, with painful slowness, to his left, and for a mo­ment felt nothing but a wash of disappointment when there didn't seem to be anything there except another construct, and this one utterly without anything like writing on the side. It did have a set of blades and claws that suggested warlike intentions, not that knowing its purpose would do him any good unless he could get it moving, which he obviously couldn 't without in­structions. But then as he stared, his eyes adjusted, and he saw it.

A faint glow of green, in the midst of the blank side of the construct, exactly like the glow of an activated Elf-stone.

He sidled up to the thing, staying in the shadows, and quested over it with a finger. Only the glow and a subtle change in texture from metal to stone informed him that the thing was there at all! It had been inset flush with the surface, and in the dim illumination from the hand-light, he wouldn't have seen it except for the glow. It was an Elf-stone, or some­thing very like one. And when he opened his fist to bring his hand-light up to it—the hand-light dimmed, and the green glow brightened.

He could have pummeled himself for stupidity. Of course! Why would you need instructions to manage one of these things? All you needed was the Elf-stone, both to power it and to control it! And, of course, that was why all of the things had collapsed into inertia when the Great Portal closed! The magic powering them that was a part of the Aether of Evelon ran out, and the Elvenlords who'd built and sustained the Portal had nothing left to supply them! Utter simplicity, but, of course, the Lesser Elvenlords who'd held back their own power either hadn't known how the constructs worked, or had been so busy eliminating their dangerous rivals that they hadn't bothered to try to learn to use the things!

Or perhaps they had been so afraid of pursuit that they just abandoned the brutes.

Or—well, it didn't matter. The point was, they had been

abandoned and they were there for the taking and now Ael-markin knew how to take and use them!

It couldn't be any simpler. And it didn't matter what this be­hemoth was originally intended to do, either. It was big, it had to be brutally strong, and it was certainly brutally heavy. It could kill Kyrtian simply by stepping on him.

Aelmarkin smothered a howl of glee, and placed the hand holding his hand-light against the Elf-stone embedded in the construct's side. It sucked in the power greedily. The hand-light vanished.

And then—Aelmarkin felt it wake and—look for more. And felt its fierce concentration focus on him.

He tried to pull his hand away in a flash of alarm.

But by then, of course, it was already too late.

Kyrtian had finally allowed Lynder and Keman to lead him to a seat on a nearby outcrop of rock. He felt— hollow. And ex­hausted. As if he had wept for a year, although he was dry-eyed.

At least mother isn 't here. That was all he could think of. At least she can't see—this. I don't think she could bear it. I think she 'd go mad.

'No, don't try to chip—it out,' he said with difficulty in an­swer to Lynder's question. 'I don't ever want Lady Lydiell to see him. Not like that, anyway. Maybe we can find a way to cover him over—'

He shuddered, a spasm of a thing that left him sweating and shaking. What must have happened? He must have somehow wakened one of those—things. Maybe it fed off his mage-lights, and he didn 't realize what was happening. He must have been so excited—too excited to think clearly.

He buried his head in his hands, shuddering all over, in spasms he couldn't control. He wanted to howl, to rail at fate, and above all things, to weep. Why couldn't he weep?

Which one of these hulks had done the deed? He wanted to know that, suddenly, with a fierce anger that took him and left him shaking. That, above all, he had to find out! He'd find the thing and take it to bits with his bare hands, and grind the bits to

dust and scatter the dust over the barren desert, by the Ances­tors, he would!

He stood up, still shaking, and turned towards them—just in time to see one of them slowly rising up from among its fel­lows, towering higher and higher, with something doll-like and screaming clenched in one fearsome claw.

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